Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami (EPUB)

Description

An eclectic, eccentric and altogether brain-bending collection of short stories.Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami’s characters confront loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distance between those who ought to be closest of all.’An intimate pleasure’ The Times

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I personally think Murakami’s novels are more compelling than his short fiction, so that’s where I’d start if I’d never read him before. I’m glad I did so before coming to these stories or I might not have kept reading his work. That’s not to say the stories in “Blind Willow” are bad or that they aren’t representative of Murakami’s writing. All the Murakami elements are there: disappearances, animals, strange occurrences. Murakami’s characters are always searching for something. Sometimes the search is literal, as in “Dabchick,” where a man on his first day of work is trying to find the place of his employment, or “Where I’m Likely to Find It,” about an investigator who searches for a man who vanished in his own building. This searching corresponds with the nature of the protagonists. At first I thought of them as naive, but I think Murakami’s protagonists are merely open to wonder. They are the people who embrace the weirdness, of which there is plenty, such as a man who vomits without cause for days on end, an “ice man,” a surfer killed by a shark, and a talking monkey. But the characters seem to accept these strange events at face value. The truly strange things to them–the things they can’t figure out–seem to be themselves, and each other. There are a lot of sideways, or glancing, relationships in these stories: two strangers at a resort, a woman confronting the narrator while searching for her estranged boyfriend, a woman and a cut-rate therapist, the mother of the shark victim and some young surfers. The true connections seem to be chance encounters while the relationships in the stories are more strained. This isn’t a new observation, but Murakami’s work is reminiscent of David Lynch’s. Both use humor and commonplace settings juxtaposed against shocking or deeply revelatory events. One example is the story “Crabs,” in which a couple vacationing in Singapore find a restaurant serving only crabs and eat there repeatedly. Then one night the man gets sick and vomits up the crab he’s eaten, only to find it riddled with worms. It’s a jarring image, one that stuck with me, and symbolic of the way the relationship was turning. While the typical Murakami strangeness abounds in “Blind Willow,” the author also shows his broad range. He can write in a more realistic vein, and he’s unafraid to explore topics like suicide, death, and grief. He’s also an international author who writes convincingly of diverse settings and who uses American pop culture references. At times it’s easy to forget he’s a Japanese author writing about Japanese characters. Maybe this is why he’s so great: he doesn’t pay attention to the limits other writers place on themselves but follows his intuition and takes risks. For that reason alone, Murakami is worth reading and studying.

⭐Murakami at his best is fantastic. His novels are all wonderful. His short stories can be wonderful too; in this collection they range from OK to excellent.

⭐This is my first purchase on Kindle for PC. I bought it because I heard about the short story, Hanalei Bay, a beautiful place on the north shore of the Hawaiian island of Kauai, which I visited about a year ago. The story is part of this collection.In another review, I described Hanalei Bay as a haunting short story about a Japanese woman who arrives in Kauai after her son dies while surfing and who returns each year to sit on the beach and sometimes play the piano in Hanalei. A ghost appears for the briefest of moments in the story, but only to two surfers who hitchhiked to Hanalei. More haunting to me still is the vision that suggests that the paradise I visited may be pierced to reveal shark attacks and drownings and worse, maybe, all of which is hard to imagine sitting on its beaches looking out at the water and the sky. The style might be called haunting, too, if it weren’t so clean. This was a find.As for the Kindle for PC form, I was satisfied with the purchase. The quality is good, the price is good. I suspect the original publication in book form was automatically re-formatted to fit the PC screen. It felt strange to have no page numbers, and there were page breaks no printer would have allowed (“widows and orphans”).

⭐When I read Murakami, I sometimes feel that he is living inside me taking notes on my feelings and my observations about people I’ve met years ago or even this morning. Then he transcribes them to paper in ways that make the commonplace magical. “Blind Willow” is a collection of 25 short stories, though the book jacket says 24. So, if there is one you do not like, you can pretend it was never there. Murakami would be happy with that solution. Some are sweet (“Chance Traveler,” about a piano tuner who meets his soul-mate in an empty café); some are bizarre (“Nausea”) or chilling (“Ice Man”); some are sad (“Tony Takitani”, whose wife is a compulsive shopper); some are melancholic (“Hanlei Bay”, another piano player, who annually visits the site of her son’s death); and some are pure whimsy (“A ‘Poor Aunt’ Story.” As with his novels, many endings feel unsatisfactorily open-ended, but Murakami creates unforgettable images.

⭐I’m not sure how Murakami can accomplish what seems like the impossible, and that is to write about the most mundane of things, but by the end of the story you realize you won’t be able to forget it. Half of the time I feel like there is a hidden meaning in the stories, and the other half of the time there is a hidden meaning I see. I would recommend that anyone reading these stories be of sound mind and stout heart, as they can get downright disturbing. Does this mean my mind is unsound and my heart is weak? I’m not sure. That’s about as close to a descriptive review of this book as I am able to give. Read it at your own risk.

⭐If you are a fan of Murakami or of short stories, this collection is a treasure. Like most collections certain stories will speak to you or stay with you long after reading them, while others will leave you feeling flat. Many 5 star stories for me. Several 4 stars. And yes. There were a few that didn’t work for me. Definitely a book to read if you are want to see what makes Murakami so special. Some of his novels grow from his short stories and the basis for Sputnik Sweetheart is found in this collection.

⭐At first I was skeptical of reading short stories because they seem to come and go rather easily and I have to sink in from a story before another starts so I can digest the essence. But, yeah. I love this book. Never knew I would find an excerpt from Norwegian Wood though and it reminded me of that calisthenics guy. Fun experience.

⭐Most of the stories are really interesting and Marukami’s style is always captivating. The only disappointment was the last story where a key protagonist is a monkey that actually talks to humans- I thought this story was a bit silly and frankly it seemed like the author did not know how to finish the story so came up with a wacky storyline to fill the void. This book is not as good as his last book ‘Men without women’ – hence 4 stars.

⭐This was a very interesting and enjoyable read, more on the serious than the funny side but we’ll balanced regardless. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys slice of life and psychological themes.I would warn that most of these short stories don’t have a concrete in book conclusion, so if you don’t enjoy that you may be disappointed. Finally most of the stories are set in the author’s homeland, Japan. The translators did a very good job as far as I could see.

⭐I’m only half way through this book,but I’m already convinced that it is class. Murakami’s ideas,themes and narratives combined with the characters, the plots, descriptive writing, symbolism and metaphors are unique and sublime… and this collection of stories has all of those qualities in abundance.

⭐I’ve struggled to engage with this format against his longer novels – they just kinda run out of steam

⭐If you like Murakami you are going to enjoy these stories, chock full as they are of classic Murakami elements like talking monkeys, ghosts and alternate reality. But his writing is so simple and straight forward that you find yourself accepting these things as a normal part of the Murakami universe and wanting more.

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